Monday was the bank holiday for Memorial Day - and another parade.   This time of military marching - ancient and modern - and wonderful school bands complete with majorettes.   And of course the best movers and shakers were definitely the mainly black bands.   It was certainly another occasion of waking up to the sizes we are all fast becoming:  it was incredibly hot (90 degrees) and very humid (and this is a bit earlier than expected here apparently), yet many of the bands were dressed in black themes, plus hat/helmet/wig, plus gloves and the dancing girls were either in tights with sort of skipping shoes, or boots - we began to worry just how many of them were going to faint!   I was more than a bit irritated by the display of flags by "our WWII Allies" - but no British flag!   And we have also discovered that WWII started in 1941 apparently according to the memorials here.

There was also an error in the figures for Rolling Thunder - there were rumoured to be 900,000 (not 9,000 as we reported in error in the last entry) Harley Davidsons in the drive-by.   And if you do the maths, at the rate of 50+ per minute for 3.5 hours it may not be pie in the sky.

Tuesday, after I had started to clean off the awful exhaust staining down Serafina's aft quarter and stern and Rob had done some work, we visited the American History Museum.   This is laid out around items, not chronologically which would have made it easier for us ignoramuses.   However, we are slowly getting there with 18th, 19th and 20th American history and there was a very good display of transport various, especially regarding the fishing industry.   We then hurried back as a cold front with attendant rain and thunderstorms was due in the evening and this anchorage is known for not brilliant holding as there is 6' of silt over harder mud (oh yes we are looking forward to lifting this!) and until your anchor has worked its way in to the underlying solid stuff, it doesn't hold.   It did eventually arrive but the winds weren't too strong and the thunderstorms slowly made their way around us from NW to N, E and then disappeared south down the Potomac. Mind you it did rain like hell and we have never seen the dinghy so full after just one nights downfall.

Wednesday we succumbed and felt we would have to get a more detailed guide book for Washington and buy Lonely Planet guides for various areas further north of us.   We have been using the Michelin guides so far but miss the less reverential tones of LPs.   So we were very well directed to visit the Kramer Book & Afterwords cafe in the Du Pont Circle area.   This involved our first trip on the Metro, which is terribly badly lit for elderly folk like us with nil eyesight - spotting the different station names was almost impossible.   The Metro is housed in very high-ceilinged concrete tubes with no adornment or advertising - not particularly pleasant experience, but very efficient and fast!   The bookshop is quite alternative and the cafe food just delicious as ever - this time crab cakes, their speciality and blueberry pie......   Honestly we can understand why the Americans are becoming an enormous race:  the servings are at least twice what we would normally eat and we haven't had a bad meal yet.

After this we took a bus to the nearby area of Georgetown (the machinery to take our money wasn't working so the driver let us for free!).   Both Du Pont and Georgetown have beautiful Georgian-type houses and they are the most expensive areas to live in.   There was also very good shopping to be had, but I restrained myself as the proud owner of a new iPad and eventually we set off back to the boat starting with a walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal which has been restored but is not navigable yet:  the lock gates are all in place but the winding gear is removed to prevent vandalism.   We wanted to walk home via the Holocaust Museum having failed to get entrance tickets on line;  this museum is free-entry but with timed tickets and the first available online were for 22nd June.   We discovered that it is possible to queue up (starting at 0830ish for 1000 opening) and get tickets first thing, so will do this on Friday.   The walk really was further than we had anticipated and in boiling sun without a hat (I thought I would be mall shopping all day is my excuse) not a brilliant idea, but we took in the Korean War Memorial and the World War Two memorial along the way.

And today, Thursday, we began with a trip to West Marine Chandlery out in Alexandria which Scott very kindly drove us to, and came home via a wonderful old-fashioned hardware store called Frager's:  it covers the frontage of one whole block and has everything.   Scott also took us on two different routes as a true tourist guide should do!   And we now know where the weekend farmers' market (apparently the "closest DC gets to foodie heaven") will be held and a branch of Safeways, if it proves insufficient.   I then carried on to the National Gallery of Art which has West and East Halls, the latter with the Modern Art collection housed in an amazing building but holding surprisingly little art and much of this was given over to a Miro exhibition - not my favourite artist (please only whisper philistine) and one that seems to follow me around the world in large exhibitions.   In fact both the halls felt like this to me, perhaps I am too used to European galleries where there just isn't enough space?

So we are working hard at catching up with the recent lack of culture and our unexercised feet and legs really know it;  thank god for unlimited showers at the CYC!